‘Falling Down’: Hollywood Racism

As an Asian-American, I applaud Jeana H. Park’s impassioned attack on “Falling Down” for its crude stereotyping of Korean-Americans (“Portrayal of Store Owner Seen as Volatile Stereotype,” March 22). In typical Hollywood fashion, the film panders to a pent-up racism, then cynically attempts to exonerate itself with a few convenient moralisms directed at the character D-FENS.

Park appreciates the profound personal distress such portrayals cause Asian-Americans and the volatile racial tensions they help arouse, which is something Mercedes D’Adderio fails to comprehend (“Grappling With a ‘Lie That Tells Us the Truth,’ ” March 22).

D’Adderio’s strategy is to reduce the film to metaphor, thereby ignoring its impact on people like Park and me. Worse, D’Adderio has the audacity to claim that the film “has nothing to do with ‘multiculturalism’ ” but is merely about a man who “feels like a foreigner in his own homeland.” If that doesn’t relate to multiculturalism, we are not reading off the same page.

GEORGE UBA

Assoc. Prof. of English

Cal State Northridge